“Probably, if we ask in advance. But if you’ve already made the trip, he’ll feel compelled to see you.”
“You sound sure of that.”
“It’s part of who he is. When he had his practice in Mill Valley, if someone showed up at his office without an appointment, he could never send them away, no matter how busy he was. If someone was there, he had to meet with them. Let me add, in case you’re getting the wrong idea—it had nothing to do with money, with trying to squeeze in another paying customer. Richard never cared about money, only about people.”
Gurney thought it odd that a man with no interest in money would have chosen to establish his practice in Mill Valley, California, one of the wealthiest communities in America.
Perhaps sensing his skepticism, Jane continued. “Large organizations have approached Richard in the past with lucrative offers—very lucrative offers—if he would work for them exclusively. But he always turned them down.”
“Why?”
“Because Richard has always been devoted to transparency. He would insist on knowing everything about any organization that would want an exclusive right to his research. Not all institutions in the field of psychological research are as independent as they claim to be. No amount of money on earth could persuade Richard to work for any entity whose goals and backing were not 100 percent visible and verifiable. That’s the kind of man he is.” She leaned toward Gurney. “You will help . . . won’t you?”
“We have a timing problem. A short trip we’ve been planning for quite a while.”
She looked wounded. “When?”
“The day after tomorrow. So there’s really nothing I can—”
“How long?”
“How long will we be away? Four or five days. Perhaps sometime after that—”
“But things are happening so fast. Isn’t there any way—?”
“Yes, matter of fact, there is!” interjected Hardwick triumphantly, holding up his phone with the screen turned outward so everyone could see the travel map it displayed. “The purple route line goes from your house all the way to Tall Pines Inn in northeastern Vermont. Between those two points are approximately two hundred miles of Adirondack mountains. I’ve found two ways of going around those mountains and two ways of going through them. One of those ways passes within twenty miles of the Gall Wilderness Preserve. All you have to do is start your vacation a day sooner than you planned and spend the first night at the super-exclusive Wolf Lake Lodge.”
Jane looked from Gurney to Madeleine, her hands clasped like a praying child’s. “You could do that, right? You could stop off there on your way to Vermont, couldn’t you?”
Gurney didn’t know how to respond without knowing what Madeleine was thinking.
His hesitation prompted Jane to address her directly. “You’ll have a beautiful room, and it won’t cost you anything.”
Madeleine’s eyes were still on the map displayed on Hardwick’s phone screen.
After a moment, to Gurney’s surprise, she nodded.
“We can do that.”
CHAPTER 7
After Jane Hammond agreed to meet them the following afternoon at the lodge, she and Hardwick departed.
Madeleine headed for the hallway that led to the bedroom, announcing that she was going to take a shower.
Gurney sensed that she wanted to avoid, at least for the moment, any further discussion of Wolf Lake. He didn’t know what to make of that, but he’d learned over the years that pursuing a subject Madeleine wasn’t ready to talk about led nowhere. Instead, he decided to take a look into the manila envelope Jane Hammond had left for him.
He brought it into the den and sat down at his desk.
In the envelope were two folders, each bearing a handwritten notation: The notation on the top folder said First Reports on the Four Deaths.
Gurney opened it and found the original news items that had appeared on the websites of various local publications. It was odd reading reports written prior to the discovery of all the facts, but he wanted to see how the incidents were initially perceived.
From the Palm Beach Post, October 2:
SUICIDE SUSPECTED IN DEATH OF PALM BEACH MAN.
The body of Christopher Wenzel, age 26, was discovered Monday morning in his condominium overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. A preliminary autopsy report listed the cause of death as possible suicide, with a fatal loss of blood resulting from deep arterial wounds to the wrists. The body was found by an independent cleaning contractor with access to Mr. Wenzel’s apartment.
Neighbors said that Mr. Wenzel lived alone but had frequent visitors and noisy parties. No information was available on the deceased’s family or employment connections. Building management declined comment.
From the Bergen Record, October 10:
TEANECK MAN FOUND DEAD IN HIS CAR.
The body of Leo Balzac, age 27, manager of the Smokers Happiness tobacco shop on Queen Anne Road, was discovered by a neighbor in the parking garage of their apartment complex on DeGraw Avenue. According to police, the deceased was found in the driver’s seat of his car. Both wrists had been cut. A knife which appeared to have been used to inflict the wounds was found on the seat next to the body. A police spokesman said that suicide was consistent with the known facts but postponed further comment pending a full autopsy and toxicology report.
A next-door neighbor described Mr. Balzac as “An energetic young man who always seemed to be in a hurry—not the kind of guy you’d ever figure to kill himself.”
From Newsday, October 26:
FLORAL PARK MAN DEAD, GIRLFRIEND MISSING.
The body of Steven Pardosa was found this past Wednesday in the apartment he occupied in the basement of his parents’ home in Floral Park. The discovery was made by Arnold Pardosa, Steven’s father, who entered the apartment with a spare key after repeated calls to Steven’s cell phone failed to get any response.
A police spokesman characterized the death as a possible suicide, saying only that there were visible wounds to the deceased’s wrists and a knife had been found at the scene. The deceased’s parents disagreed with the suicide suggestion, insisting that such a possibility was “some kind of cover-up.”
Pardosa was 25 years old and had been self-employed for the past year in a landscape maintenance business. Law enforcement officials expressed interest in speaking with the deceased’s girlfriend, Angela Castro, who had recently been living with him but whose current whereabouts are unknown. Ms. Castro has not appeared for the past two days at the salon where she is employed as a hair stylist. The salon manager, Eric, who declined to give his last name, said that no calls had been received from Ms. Castro to explain her absence.”
Before going on to the articles covering the death of Ethan Gall, Gurney jotted down a few facts that caught his attention.
As he’d already mentioned to Hardwick, the similarity of ages was noteworthy. It could, for example, be the basis for some school-related or other social contact.
And then there was all that wrist cutting. Despite its high profile in fiction, and the sky-high number of self-inflicted cutting incidents propelling young people into ERs each year, successful suicides were rarely accomplished that way. Men had a strong preference for shooting or hanging themselves. If just one of those guys had decided to kill himself by cutting his wrists, that would be unusual enough. All of them making that same decision was peculiar in the extreme.